B’musings

April 25, 2011

Solution for Quickr/FileNet/XenApp Integration, Earthquakes, and Stuff

Filed under: IBM,Lotus — Mike Burford @ 12:08 pm
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It’s been a couple of months and a somewhat disruptive earthquake since I posted about the problem we had run into with Quickr not being supported in a Citrix/Xenapp environment.

The customer’s offices were in the building next to the collapsed CTV building (as shown on TV), so they are now spread around three offices across the city.  We lost our office as well so things have been a bit more challenging than normal, but we’re all up and running and the project is progressing through design phase.  A definite advance on the status I last reported.

I’ve had a lot of support from IBM’s Lotus team in Australia and they put me in touch with one of the FileNet technical sales guys who came up with a workaround for the Quickr/XenApp issue: IBM Content Collector for Email.  Notes 8.5.3 is going to support XenApp 6 so the users will have the Notes Standard client running under XenApp, Quickr will be running on WebSphere Portal Server, and IBM Content Collector (ICC) will “archive” the required content from the mail files on the Domino server into FileNet.  FileNet Services for Quickr will provide the integration between Quickr and FileNet so in theory we will have access via Quickr to content in FileNet that has been collected both from Quickr entries and email content harvested by ICC.  Users can initiate a search of archived content from within Notes, but it will launch a web interface to display the results from FileNet.  Add Sametime, Traveler, and telephony integration to the mix and it’s a challenging project!

We’re putting together the proof of concept and demo environment this week,  I’m building the two servers for Domino and Quickr on WebSphere Portal Server as I write this.  It’s going to be an interesting week!

As for other news, my mother-in-law lost her house during the Feb earthquake and is now living with us, and my wife and I are now full-time carers of our two and a half year old granddaughter and subsequently feeling a lot older than we should be!  Though I have experienced my first Wiggles concert as a result and that was something not to be forgotten!

And no, the house-load of women is not the reason I’m in my office building servers on a public holiday.  :)

June 3, 2009

It sure has been a while!

Filed under: BlackBerry,Lotus,Reading — Mike Burford @ 1:12 pm
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It’s a bit like the confessional thing: “Forgive me for it has been a long time since my last blog …”  I’ve been on a non-Notes/Domino project doing some business analysis work for a client looking at implementing an ERP system.  I’ve spent the last few months interviewing staff and documenting the current and proposed process models for various departments using Tibco Business Studio – quite a cool program.  The thing is, I spend most of the day doing that then have to spend the evenings and weekends catching up on my “normal” work so with that, a sick 10-month old granddaughter at home, and taking on the treasurer position for a church start-up, things have been really full on.  And probably why I’m now sick at home myself.

But it’s been an interesting few months, I’ve set up Sametime and Quickr demos and rolled out a Quickr implementation as a result; I’ve done my first BlackBerry BPS implementation in a Windows 2008 environment (on Exchange 2007); I’ve completed – well, me and the customer’s project team – a year long Notes/Domino 8 roll-out project; and this weekend I upgraded a server with 1,300 mail files to Domino 8.5 and implemented DAOS (Domino Attachment and Object Service) which resulted in 163 Gb of disk space saving – a reduction of 43.5% of disk usage – and there’s still 12 Gb of mail files that couldn’t be compacted so we’re probably looking at a 44-45% saving.

I’ve also read “Now, Discover your Strengths” and completed the online “StrengthsFinder” questionnaire and found it interesting reviewing the various jobs I’ve done, positions I’ve held, projects I’ve worked on etc, in light of what are (apparently) my top five strengths.  I look forward to seeing whether focusing on those strengths in future work/projects makes a noticeable difference to the outcome and my enjoyment of the work.

So that’s me for now, time to go and lie down again.

December 17, 2008

“IBM launches a Linux based virtual desktop”

Filed under: Lotus,Technology — Mike Burford @ 12:06 pm
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I missed this news from IBM, but David Marshall has written about the new Linux based virtual desktop from IBM.

November 3, 2008

Interesting comparison of Email system uptime by Google/Radicati

Filed under: Lotus,Technology — Mike Burford @ 3:43 am
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The “Official Google Blog” has posted an entry titled “What we learned from 1 million businesses in the cloud” that in itself is an interesting read, but something that I found intriguing were the figures reported by the Radicati Group comparing downtime between Gmail, GroupWise, Lotus, and Exchange.  The Radicati Group’s report is way too expensive for me to have a look at, but I wonder how many Lotus systems they evaluated that aren’t running on Windows?

Update: Volker and Jack Dausman raise the issue re. the credibility of Radicati’s figures

October 26, 2008

Good familiarisation, practice, demo site – Lotus Greenhouse

Filed under: Lotus,Social Networking,Technology — Mike Burford @ 3:38 am
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If you need a good place to review various IBM Lotus software products, check out Lotus Greenhouse.  It’s got pages for Lotus Connections, Quickr, Sametime, iNotes, Lotus Forms Turbo, Websphere Portal, and IBM Mashup Centre.  You can either use it for learning how the various products work, or work together, as a demo site for clients, or, as in my case, for showing my Microsoft workmates how Lotus products can look and feel.

October 15, 2008

I so much prefer BES/BPS on Domino than Exchange

Filed under: BlackBerry,Lotus — Mike Burford @ 1:31 am
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I do quite a bit of BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES)/BlackBerry Professional Software (BPS) installation and support on both Domino and Exchange.  Generally it works well in both environments – though I have had some really painful MSDE issues – but if I ever do run into problems it is just so much easier to troubleshoot in a Domino environment, particularly with the Domino console reporting.  Sure, there are the text file logs for Exchange (and Domino), but on a busy server it’s not that easy to pick out the data I’m looking for.  And with a Domino based wireless activation when the user is somewhere else in the city/region/country, being able to track the process from the delivery of the etp message through to the mail/PIM population really helps managing the process and the user’s expectations.

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